


Epilogue: Peace and Private Wars

by Linnet



Series: Prince Yuri of Rusiki [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Arranged Marriage, Epilogue, F/F, M/M, Mages, Magic, Weddings, fae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-26 01:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16209458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linnet/pseuds/Linnet
Summary: The war is over, but the dust hasn't settled yet.-"Oh, there are some stories I haven’t told Otabek yet. Just in case Yuri really pisses me off sometime," Mila says.“Okay,” Sara grins, slyly.  “Maybe that part of having siblings is kinda fun.”





	1. Prologue

Mila almost misses the post.

She had known that Victor and Yuri were eager to be married, but really, they haven’t even been back a whole day. Hurtling down the last turn of the stairs, she bursts out into the courtyard just as the messengers are mounting.

“Wait!” She yells, cursing her tunic belt for not being fastened yet. Mila hates mornings at the best of times, and being forced to dress at speed and then run halfway across the castle before breakfast and after two weeks of riding isn’t improving her opinion of this one much.

“Wait!” One of the messengers turns. Mila arrives, and nearly crashes into her horse. “Which of you is going southwest?”

The messenger nods at her.

“I am,” she says. “Do you have a message for Princess Sara?”

Mila decides not to comment on the tone of her voice.

“Paper?” She pants, “Pen?”

They are produced, and handed to her with some frowning. Quite frankly, Mila doesn’t care how rude she was being. She already hates this morning.

 

_Sara,_ she scribbles, leaning the paper against her knee.

_From your last three letters, I assume my last got lost. We were in Atil-Khazaran. Long story, we’re back now._

She pauses, not knowing what else to say.

_I couldn’t persuade Victor not to invite Michele to the wedding too but please come anyway._

_Again, sorry for silence. Will write properly soon._

_Hope you are well._

_Mila_

 

The letter is folded and handed back to the messenger, who tucks it primly between two invitations. Then Mila stands and watches the messengers leave. There are a lot of them. Not everyone will come, not at this late notice, but many of them will. It’s going to be a big wedding.

She hopes Sara will come.

She will forgive Mila for the silence. It’s not the first time a letter hasn’t made it to her, after all, and Mila has a lot to tell her about, so the next one will be twice as long. She’ll make it up to her.

She hopes she’ll see Sara again before her own wedding.

 

-

 

The castle squats among a sprawl of tents. There’s no way they could have fitted this many guests in the castle itself. Katsuki’s family and friends had had priority. The Crispinos had not. Only now it’s raining, and what had at first seemed like a pleasant way to draw out the evening by accompanying Sara to her tent is now a slightly squashed hope that Mila is regretting.

“I really thought it was this way,” Sara says. She’s not any happier about this than Mila is, thought at least her hair is done up and therefore not sticking to her face. They can barely see each other in the dark. Personally Mila’s quite glad that she can’t be seen right now. She may have put slightly more effort into her appearance than she usually would, and the rain has not been kind to any of it.

Sara determinedly turns down another aisle of tents, takes two firm steps, and then stops and sighs.

Mila gives in to the little voice tapping on the inside of her skull.

“Just come back to my room,” she says. The fake calm gives way to a sudden rush of explanation, because that did not sound as innocent as she had intended it to. “We can make a mattress out of the something, the servants will still be up. It’ll be more comfortable than your rollup.”

Sara looks back at Mila over her shoulder. Her eyes are wide, not panicked, but definitely unhappy.

“I promised Mickey.” And after Yuri’s tournament, he has been even more vigilant and manipulative than before. Mila conjures a mental image of Sara’s brother and kicks him, hard, in the imaginaries.

“Fuck your brother,” she says. “It’s cold and wet and late and if we stay out here any longer you’ll catch something.” And he’s not worth getting ill over, she adds, privately. Sara agrees that her brother is overbearing - oh boy, she agrees - but he’s her brother, and she doesn’t think that Mila’s abject hatred of him is at all deserved.

Sara walks back towards her, where Mila’s shivering at the end of the branching tent streets. She’s smiling, with just a hint of mischief.

“Maybe if I caught something I’d have to stay here a little longer,” she says. Mila’s heart clenches with the terrible, terrible grip of hope. And then Sara says, “Maybe Mickey would have to go home without me.”

Right. They’re friends. They’re friends who have only met twice, both occasions far too short. But Sara’s life and vivacity is infectious, even through her letters, and Mila knows Sara likes her. As a friend. So it makes sense that she wants to stay here longer - and avoid her brother, of course.

A voice echoes out across the tents, muffled but unmistakable.

“Sara!”

_Speak of the devil_ , Mila thinks.

“Shit,” Sara whispers, eyes round. “He’s already angry.”

Mila has a split second to react. It’s not long enough for her brain to get an input.

She grabs Sara’s hand.

“Run!”

Sara runs. Her wet hand settles into Mila’s grip without slipping, her strides steady and sure in the damp grass. Thankfully then Mila’s brain does catch up, because by then all her treacherous heart is capable of doing is beating wildly and fluttering over the fact that _she is holding Sara’s hand_. The fact that they’ve been dancing together for most of the night is besides the point. This is different.

They break from the main path, dipping between the tents and jumping their ropes in the dark, heading straight towards the dim torchlight of the castle’s courtyard.

“Sara!” Mickey’s voice is further away now.

“Shut your yellin’!” Someone shouts back, “We’re tryin’ to sleep!”

Mila pulls Sara through the main gate and darts under the protection of the wall, stopping just out of sight of the tents.

Sara’s skirt, which had swung so beautifully as they danced, now flops wetly against her legs. Her eyes are bright. She hasn’t let go of Mila’s hand.

“Do you think he saw us?” She whispers, more exhilarated than afraid. Mila just shakes her head, breathless from the sharp sprint. Sara giggles. They are standing very close, tucked just under the protection of the gate tower, in a little patch of dark.

“Princess Mila?” A voice says, questioningly.

Mila’s lungs drop through her stomach. Then she turns, and they return to their rightful position in her chest.

“Oh,” she sighs, “It’s only you Olenka. Oh, could you send some towels up to my room?” And then, feeling the need to justify this, “I’m afraid Princess Sara couldn’t find her tent, and seeing as she’s so wet and cold now I thought she’d better sleep with me.” Olenka’s eyebrow rises. Internally, Mila curses her fumbled choice of words.

A little distance away, Mickey’s voice rings out again.

“Sara!”

Olenka’s eyebrow rises slightly further. It’s in danger of disappearing into her hair.

“I’m not sure we have the means for another bed, princess,” Olenka says. Mila glares at her. They have known each other a long time, and Olenka had been her maidservant before Mila grew out of them, and now she’s pretty much in charge of housekeeping. Which means she’s probably telling the truth. Probably. The problem with pre-teen Mila having maidservants is that they all know slightly more about her than she’s comfortable with. Including an apparent ability to read her damn mind. There’d been quite enough of that going on recently, and she’d really rather not be involved.

“Then find some,” she says, snappishly. “She is an honoured guest, we…”

“Oh I don’t mind, we can sha…” Sara had started to say at the same time.

They both trail off, and glance at each other. Mila hopes to God that the rising warmth isn’t a blush. _Nobody_ makes her blush without her permission. Except Lilia, but she doesn’t count because she’s basically a witch.

Olenka waits just a beat too long before she says, “I’m sure I’ll do my best, your majesty.” Oh Christ, when was the last time Olenka called her anything but Mila? “Would you also like something warm to drink? Tea, perhaps?” The question could have been innocuous enough if it hadn’t been a bit too pointed. ‘A warm drink’ before bed is definitely usually alcoholic. Damn servants and their subtleties. Expert manipulation is just something you pick up in this castle, apparently.

Actually, Mila hadn’t drunk very much. She hadn’t needed to. But she’s definitely not feeling as clear-minded as she usually does, and tea might help.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she says, demurely. Which is a giveaway in itself, really. “Sara, do you need anything else?”

Sara might not have picked up on the exact subtext of that one, but she’s definitely noticed how Olenka’s stare has been levelled at her for a good twenty seconds.

“A hairbrush, if you can spare one ma’am,” she says, meekly, ignoring the fact that Olenka is definitely too young to be a ma’am. “Mine’s in my tent.”

Olenka bobs a curtsey, as polite as pie.

“Of course, your majesty.”

Despite having nothing in her hands to bustle with, she manages to bustle off very effectively. For a moment, Mila stares after her, wondering just how many rumours are going to be flying through the castle this evening, and how many of them might reach the kind of ears she’d rather they didn’t. Not that Yakov or Lilia have mastered the art of talking to the the people in their employment, or discovered how useful that could be, like Mila had by accident simply by making friends with them. Olenka isn’t stupid, either. She knows the difference between harmless gossip and the dangerous kind. Not that Mila trusts her not to meddle - but she probably trusts Olenka to protect her honour. Or what’s left of it, anyway.

Sara shivers.

“This way,” Mila says, keeping a firm grip on Sara’s hand.

The fire in her room has been lit for some time, and the warmth hits them the moment they open the door. Sara sighs a little, possibly with relief. For a moment, Mila is lost. Sara stands in the doorway where Mila had let go of her hand, hovering with the politeness of someone who has just entered a space that does not belong to them, and which they are not sure how they fit into.

“Come and stand by the fire,” Mila says, “You’ll dry out faster.”

The towels arrive barely a moment later, borne by a shy young girl who bobs to both of them, stares a little too long, and then leaves the room at a run.

Definitely sent by Olenka.

Mila picks up one of the towels.

“Take your dress off under this. I’ll try and find something of mine that’ll fit you.” She puts the towel around Sara’s shoulders. She’s shivering. Their hands brush as Sara takes the towel from her. It takes all of Mila’s self control not to jump.

“Thank you.” Sara’s smile suggests that this is some kind of grand adventure, not a damp night in spring after somebody else got married. It’s a bit infectious. Mila decides, trying to focus on the contents of her clothes chests as fabric rustles behind her, that it is possibly the most exciting night of her year.

“Can I turn around?” She asks, eventually, having found something warm and vaguely Sara-sized.

“Of course.”

Sara is standing by the fire. Her midnight-blue dress is laid carefully over the back of a chair. She’s tied the towel around herself, but her shoulders are bare, and in her entire life Mila’s only seen that much of her own legs. Her hands are raised in an attempt to undo her hair.

“Here,” Mila steps forward, putting the clothes down on the bed. “Let me help.”

Sara smiles, letting her hands drop. In the light of the fire, her eyes are soft, her skin warm and smooth where it had been raised like gooseflesh in the cold.

“Thank you,” she says, quietly, like she means it, as Mila teases the pins out. Her hair is wet through, and Mila takes care to lie the dark, heavy curls against Sara’s back and shoulders softly, rather than letting them fall. Sara’s breath is sweet with the lingering sugar of the dessert from hours before.

“Do you want me to brush it out for you?” Mila asks, equally softly. The rest of the castle has settled into sleep, and they are standing so close that she needn’t do more than whisper.

“Would you?”

Sara’s smiles are never-ending, but each one slightly different, and each squeezing Mila’s heart a little tighter every time.

Mila knows what she wants. She has watched the way all three of her brothers dance around their feelings. After watching Georgi fall in love with someone new every week apparently just for the sake of pining over it because he always refused to say anything to them, Mila had decided at the ripe old age of twelve that she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t be like that.

By sixteen, she was lying awake at night and imagining it. They would dance, of course, not because it was romantic but because it was practically the only way to meet people at court. And Mila would know, from the way they moved together, from the pressure of her hand on Mila’s waist, from the way she’d smile. That would be romantic. And then Mila had thought up three hundred ways or more that she would kiss her. The girls at court had been quite happy to help her practice that.

Only now ‘she’ is Sara, standing nearly naked with her hair down in Mila’s room and leaning slightly towards her, as if knowing where Mila’s thoughts had gone. They have danced all evening. Sara had danced beautifully. And Mila had been wrong about the hand at her waist, because it had been her hand on Sara’s waist, and Sara’s hand on her bare shoulder, and Mila had been far more interested in the way their fingers intertwined anyway. They have talked and laughed all evening, and every time Sara smiles it leaves Mila slightly breathless. The heart-stopping excitement at the arrival of a letter from her makes sense, now. But this is better than letters, so much better than letters. She’s here, and she’s real, and Mila’s heart is doing somersaults.

And Mila can’t kiss her.

Which is wrong, of course, and her hands don’t seem to be able to escape the thrall of years of dream-practice, because somehow her hand has found Sara’s waist, and…

And someone knocks on the door.

Mila jumps. She takes two steps towards the door. Two steps away from Sara.

“Come in.”

Olenka enters. She is carrying a tray with two mugs of something steaming, and a hairbrush. Behind her, two young boys are carrying what Mila can only assume are blankets and a mattress. She curtsies, and gives no indication at all of having sized them up in a single glance. Mila feels the blush rising again and wonders when she regressed to being a fourteen year old.

“I hope tea is acceptable. I’m afraid we seem to be running low on… well, everything else.”

“As you should be, after any good wedding,” Sara says, picking a cup up from the tray. “Thank you, Olenka. Sorry to keep you up.”

Olenka bobs a curtsey, her expression softening.

“It’s my job, your majesty. We found plenty of blankets, and the rooms are always well-stocked with wood, so you two make sure you keep warm.” For just a second, Mila contemplates asking her to leave, but then Olenka looks directly at her and says, completely innocently, “We don’t want either of you to get ill now.”

_I’m going to put salt in your tea,_ Mila thinks, knowing that it probably won’t catch Olenka out, but she still derives some satisfaction from the mental promise.

The two boys have finished making the bed, and duck back outside the door, as out of place in a princess’ bedroom as hunting dogs in a bathhouse. Olenka, who knows the palace better than anyone and is at home everywhere, picks up Sara’s dress and hangs it properly from the bed. Evidently she needs a poke.

“Thank you Olenka, I’ll bring the tray down tomorrow morning.”

Thus thwarted, Olenka bobs another curtsey, and takes her leave. The door shuts softly behind her. Wryly, Mila thinks that if she’d been just half a second later then she might really have interrupted what she’d only thought she had.

She tries not to be too disappointed. After all, she’s probably going to have to marry somebody else pretty damn soon, and Sara will probably never marry at all if Michele has anything to say about it.

“You’re shivering,” Sara touches her arm. Mila hadn’t heard her move. “Change first. My hair can wait.”

“Try these,” she says, handing Sara the clothes. “I’ll look that way.”

Sara nods, turns away, and starts to undo her towel.

Mila turns like she’s been slapped. Staring at the wall, she tries to breathe normally. In the quietness of the room, even that could give her away.

Her usual nightdress isn’t enough to warm her, even after she’s towelled herself down thoroughly, so she pulls one of the blankets off the bed and wraps it around her shoulders.

“Is it safe to turn around?” Sara whispers.

“Yes.”

They turn at the same time. Sara meets her gaze. The winter underlayers Mila had given her are clean, and fairly new. Mila hadn’t worn them much because they’re too big for her. They’re more than a little bit too big for Sara, too. Her eyes are full of laughter.

“I don’t think Mickey will need to worry about my modesty,” she says, her whisper caught on a smile. “Even my wrists aren’t showing. My hair is a mess, and I think half my makeup is fertilising the tent field!”

Mila knows what to say to this. Something reassuring, something about her own state not being much better...

“You’re beautiful,” She says.

Sara’s laugh dies on her lips.

“Oh.” It might be a blush. Maybe.

_Fuck_ , Mila thinks, _idiot_.

“Can I brush your hair?” She says, instead.

They stand by the fire as Mila slowly works the tangles out and squeezes the water into a towel. Strictly speaking, she doesn’t need to take as long over it as she does, but Sara had sighed and leaned back into the brush and Mila is absolutely fucking hopeless.

“What’s it like, having short hair?” Sara asks, eventually, and takes a sip of her tea.

“Light,” Mila says, suddenly wondering whether Roza has cut hers yet. It’s been a while since she heard from her, although of course she’s further away, and probably busier. Perhaps she’ll write again, just so Roza knows Mila’s thinking of her. “I don’t miss having to find something to do with it every day, but I do miss being able to wear beautiful hairstyles.”

“It suits you short,” Sara says, “You have a delicate face. It’s not your natural colour, is it?”

“No,” Mila pulls the brush from Sara’s crown to the tips, slow and careful. The brush runs smoothly, but she does it again, just to be sure. “I’m a brunette.”

It feels like an admission, but the tension of it dissipates in Sara’s reply.

“Red is bolder. That suits you too.”

Mila runs out of reasons to keep brushing.

“Do you want me to plait it?” That, at least, Roza had helped her improve at very quickly.

“No, but thank you. It never dries if it’s up.” Sara turns, and suddenly they’re face to face again, close in the firelight. Her hair lies over her shoulder, flat and smooth. She’s looking at Mila like she’s waiting for something.

Mila steps away. She puts two logs on the fire, then picks up her tea. It’s not hot anymore, but lukewarm will do. Honestly she just needs something to hold onto.

“Take the bed,” she says, as Sara goes to sit on the impromptu mattress. Sara sits down anyway, with a shrug.

“There’s too much space in a bed that size on my own,” she says. Mila nearly drops her tea, but then Sara says. “Did I tell you how old we were when mum and dad finally let us have separate rooms?”

“No?” Damn her brain, damn her stupid, stupid brain.

“Sixteen,” Sara sighs, flopping back on the pile of blankets. “Sixteen! It’s still weird sleeping alone. Being a twin really messes with you sometimes.”

Of course she was talking about Mickey. It’s always Mickey. Not, Mila supposes, that Sara really has anyone else in her life to talk about.

“I don’t think siblings are much better,” she sighs, sitting down on her bed. “Yuri snuck into my room for years when we were kids.”

“Really?” Sara giggles. “I can’t imagine that.”

_Neither of us liked the castle much_ , Mila thinks, but it’s not the kind of thing she can say. Not yet, anyway. Sara had told her about what her parents have taken to calling ‘the incident’, which implies a certain level of trust between them. But teenage trysts aren’t quite the same level of confession as confirming your hotly-debated illegitimacy.

So Mila grins, and says, “Oh, there are some stories I haven’t told Otabek yet. Just in case Yuri really pisses me off sometime.”

“Okay,” Sara grins, slyly.  “Maybe that part of having siblings is kinda fun.”

That surprises a laugh out of Mila. Especially knowing some of the dirt Sara has on her twin.

“Sssh! Someone might hear you.” Sara jumps up, giggling.  

Oh, Mila would reassure her that the walls on either side of the room are thick stone, but she can’t promise that Olenka isn’t kneeling to peer through the keyhole. If she is, she’s getting an eye full. Sara is kneeling on the bed, still reaching out towards Mila as if to put a hand over her mouth. The pyjamas are slipping off one shoulder. And Mila, frozen just slightly too far away to touch, from the position of the door would be sitting under her, looking up with eyes wide, and her blanket slipping off to reveal her nightdress.

Unfortunately, knowing that you’re not supposed to be laughing is the most effective way to make everything ten times as funny. Covering her mouth, Mila curls in, attempting to stifle the giggles.

It’s ridiculous. It’s utterly ridiculous. What was she doing? Inviting Sara to her room instead of following Mickey’s call?

“Mila, Mila, shhhh,” Sara shuffles closer, but she’s still smiling.

It’s stupid. What had Mila hoped for? Why, at that, had Sara followed her?

“Mila if you don’t shut up I will have to make you,” Sara says. If Mila’s giggle hadn’t already almost faded she might have choked on it. “Or… not.” Sara is watching her expression. She’s stopped moving forward, but she hasn’t moved back either. Mila stares up at her, in the sudden dawning realisation that she might not, actually, have been misreading the signals. It might not have been wishful thinking after all.

She lowers her hand from her mouth. Sara’s gaze flickers to her lips.

“The tournament,” Mila says. The words almost spit themselves out. Perhaps she’d been trying to hold them back, but they’ve been sitting on the tip of her tongue all evening. “My tournament.”

Sara does sit back then. But she pulls Mila's blanket back up first, covering her bare shoulder. It’s a very careful movement. Their skin doesn’t touch.

“Your tournament,” she says. Then she stands up, and goes and sits on the bed. The makeshift bed. On the floor.

“You really can have the bed,” Mila says, and resists the urge to add ‘on your own’. It’s implied, which is enough, and there’s still a desperate kind of hope that’s making her heart beat and stills her tongue before she can say it. If Sara was any less of a Princess, she would push. If she did, Mila would give in. But this is their line in the sand. An impasse.

Mila holds on very carefully to the fact that she refused based on her situation, not her feelings. She hopes Sara noticed that. Not that it changes anything.

“I don’t mind,” Sara says, smiling up at her. Relaxing, Mila smiles back. Sara isn’t the kind of person to take a rejection personally, either. It’s not the end. “I don’t want to take your bed from you. Besides, we slept on much worse on the way here.” It’s conversational, small talk, as she settles in amongst the blankets and arranges them to her liking. The candlelight shines off the damp curtain of hair that falls over her shoulder as she does so, obscuring her expression.

Mila sits on her bed, and can’t think of anything to say.

“I’m sorry it’s such a long journey,” she manages, eventually.

Sara shuffles into her blankets, and turns to look at her.

“I would sleep on the cold, hard floor of our dungeon for a hundred nights if I could dance with you just once at the end of it.”

Mila’s heart nearly stops. Watching her, Sara’s eyes are soft, her smile smaller and yet somehow more real than any of the smiles she’s graced Mila with so far.

Unable to look at her, Mila leans over, and blows the candle out. The light of the fire leaves Sara’s outline visible, but spares Mila her expression.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“It’s close now, isn’t it?” Sara says. “Your tournament. How long?”

“Two months.”

Sara lies down. Mila, sick to her stomach and suddenly fighting back tears, does the same. She doesn’t bother to crawl under the blankets. Battling to keep her breathing steady is taking up too much concentration to worry about being cold.

“Well, it’s been a year,” Sara says, “Two months won’t be so bad.”

Mila sits up. “You’re coming?”

“Of course! I haven’t told Mickey, obviously, but I already have a plan. I can just leave all of the non-perishables packed, and I know loads of people are on my side, so it’ll be easy to get rations and to keep it secret. By the time he realises I’m gone I’ll be too far away for him to catch me up. I’m going to ride at night, and by the wrong path too, and if he tries to track me, I… well, anyway, I have a plan.”

“You’ve really thought about this.”

Sara sighs. “It would be easier just to tell him. If I really fought him, he would let me go. But would you believe that running away is easier?”

_Yes_ , Mila thinks. _I really can_. She takes a deep breath.

“And what will you do if they close it off to just men?”

“Cut my hair and bind my chest and wear a full helmet and somebody else’s colours,” Sara says, promptly. Mila can’t quite respond. The tears had been slightly too close for comfort, and though they’re shed for an entirely different reason now, she’s just as powerless to hold them back.

_Maybe she loves me too_ , she thinks, and gasps aloud at the pain of it. The idea alone feels like someone has stabbed her in the chest.

“Mila?” Sara’s voice is soft, so soft. In the darkness, she has rolled over, and she reaches her hand out towards the bed. “I know I might not win,” she says. “But I’m going to do nothing but train until then. It’s worth the risk, right?” Her certainty wavers on the last question.

“Yes,” Mila rushes to say, aware that her voice is wobbling a little. She reaches down and takes Sara’s hand. “Yes,” she says, again, more firmly this time. “Yes, it’s worth the risk.”

“You’re worth the risk,” Sara says, sitting up. The blankets slip from her shoulders. “I was just… I thought I was hoping so hard that I’d started seeing things that weren’t there.” She reaches up, and touches Mila’s face. Her fingers are warm from the blankets, rough from her training. “Darling,” _Darling_ , “You’re crying.”

“I know,” Mila takes Sara’s hand, and moves it away. For a moment, they are silent. Mila lets the weight of Sara’s hands rest in hers, and knows there’s an unspoken question. They haven’t moved. The edge of the bed has become a barrier that they will hold hands across, but not cross. Perhaps Sara would. Perhaps she’s waiting for Mila’s invitation.

Sometimes - only sometimes, when it hurts so much that she forgets what the last year would have been like without her, Mila wishes that she’d never met Sara at all.

“It’ll hurt,” Mila says.

“It’ll hurt anyway. Let’s make it worth hurting for.”

A shudder passes through Mila. Whether it’s the ache of wanting, the cold, or simply the aftershocks of the sobs, she doesn’t know. She says nothing. Sara waits, then dips her head. Her fingers slip from Mila’s soft grasp, and she daren’t hold on. That, for some reason, hurts worse than anything else.

“Sara,” she says. Sara stops. It feels like there’s a hole in Mila’s stomach, but her voice is steady. “I’m cold.”

For a moment, Sara does nothing. Her hand, only halfway back to her body, hovers in the air between them. Holding still, Mila wonders whether she’s pushed back too many times. Whether Sara is going to offer her a blanket, or whether she’ll get up and put another log on the fire. She doesn’t.

“Are you afraid?” The question surprises Mila. It takes her a moment to reply.

“Of you, no. But I’m afraid of what losing you might to do me, if I had something to lose.”

“Then I won’t lose,” Sara says, firmly. Mila reaches out. Sara lets her hand be taken, and lets Mila pull her up, into the bed.

“You know,” Sara says, as she tucks the blankets around her, as she tucks herself into Mila’s warmth. “You could have just asked.”

_Fuck it,_ Mila thinks.

“Then will you kiss me?”

 

-

 

_Dear Sara,_

_Otabek and Yuri are engaged. My tournament is closed to men. Burn this note, it’ll fuck with Mickey once he realises you’re gone._

_With love,_

_Mila_


	2. A Message

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been going too well.
> 
> Roza has been consciously trying to let go of her superstitions. Traditions and superstitions have only been a total nuisance, to say the least, and ‘it’s going surprisingly smoothly’ does not necessarily mean that ‘something terrible is going to happen’. The world isn’t balanced like that. That’s the point. Her job is to bring it into balance, and it is keeping her up at night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to say before - this is most likely going to update every weekend. I can't say a specific day or a time, but my goal is one chapter every week. 
> 
> Thank you so much for coming this far with me! I promise I read and adore all of your comments, but my inbox is pretty full at the moment and it's slightly overwhelming trying to reply to them all. I'm getting there! <3

It has been going too well.

Roza has been consciously trying to let go of her superstitions. Traditions and superstitions have only been a total nuisance, to say the least, and ‘it’s going surprisingly smoothly’ does not necessarily mean that ‘something terrible is going to happen’. The world isn’t balanced like that. That’s the point. Her job is to bring it into balance, and it is keeping her up at night. She isn’t ungrateful for that because the exhaustion is the only thing keeping the nightmares at bay. Nevertheless, the thought tends to occur anyway. She’s got used to burying it. She’s got a job to do, and the less she’s influenced by unfounded fears the better she’ll be able to do it.

_“Princess Roza?”_

Elve doesn’t need to come into her room to wake her up anymore, and as such Roza has adjusted to the morning alarm being a voice inside her head. This time, however, it isn’t Elve. Elve has never once addressed her by rank.

_“Qaasaa?”_

As ever, the woman is far more closed off than most of the others. Roza can’t see anything beyond the pre-dawn darkness of her own ceiling. Neither is there much of an emotion behind the call – but there is something.

_“We have a visitor.”_

Qaasaa’s voice vanishes, leaving behind it just a hint of panic.

Roza swears, swings her legs out of bed, and grabs her shirt from the chair. Two seconds later she gets her elbow stuck in it.

-

“Problem.” Yuri dumps his quiver on the bed. The handle has snapped. This is not, Beka realises, the problem at hand. He had been reading, easing into the morning slowly as he has yet to hear from Roza.

Yuri is angry. Not the kind of immediate anger that means shouting and occasionally throwing things – but like an old wound with the scab ripped off. Otabek marks the page, and puts the book down on the bedside table.

“Tell me.”

“Can I just...” Yuri waves his hand, vaguely, in the direction of Otabek’s head.

“Yes, of course.”

They can do this from a distance, but it’s easier touching. Instead of taking his hand or leaning against him, Yuri kneels on the bed, steadies Otabek with a hand on his shoulder, and presses their foreheads together.

_“Everybody knows I’m illegitimate! What difference does it make?”_

_Otabek is watching Yakov through Yuri’s eyes. It’s the great hall, just after breakfast, when Yakov had held Yuri back as the rest of them left. The memory is vivid with both the freshness and the anger of it._

_“You are my son,” Yakov says, repeating himself._

_“And Lilia’s not my mother. Why does this matter now?”_

_“The rumours must be laid to rest.”_

_You mean the truth must be laid to rest, Yuri thinks._

_“Right,” he says, “Because if we pretend Mila’s legitimate then more powerful people turn up to her tournament and you get a better deal out of her.”_

_Yakov sighs. “Yuri, this is not negotiable. If you do not fight under my name, you do not fight at all.”_

_“I’m not fighting!” This is his damn sister’s tournament, after all. “Why does it matter now?”_

_“It is simply a situation that needed to be made clear to you.”_

_Because Yuri had been running around referring to himself as ‘Sir Plisetsky’, and that is not acceptable anymore. It never had been, to Yakov. Now he just has a reason to enforce it._

Otabek takes a deep breath. He understands Yuri’s anger. It’s hardly a relevant issue right now, and it seems unnecessarily cruel.

It’s common knowledge that Yuri is not Lilia’s son, and that had admittedly drawn the rest of his siblings under query – but Mila no more than the others. As far as Otabek was aware, Yuri being the youngest one had made it easier to pretend he was the only one. After Yuri had reclaimed his name and Otabek had knighted him under it, after they’d got engaged out of choice, rather than obligation, after it had seemed that Yakov could take nothing else from him - he had taken this.

However, the deep breath is necessary. Just because Otabek understands Yuri’s anger doesn’t mean that anger is the best response, or what Yuri needs right now.

“When do you next duel?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” Yuri rolls away, dumping himself on the bed. “Championships, maybe?”

That’s a dream, Otabek knows, although they haven’t been able to solidify any plans. He’d like to resume entering championships too, given the chance, and it’s a solid way of forging alliances. It would be blind of him to say that it wouldn’t also solidify the country’s position as a stable power again. But they’d missed the last Assissian one without even realising and they’ve barely heard whispers of the next yet. It may also be a few years until they are free to travel to wherever a championship might be held, rather than wherever they are most needed. A return trip to the Americas is long overdue, for a start. They owe many thanks...

He pulls his thoughts back to their original track; it may be a while until Yuri duels again.

“After we’re married?” He says. Yuri sits up, opens his mouth, then closes it again. Something familiar and warm is beginning to colour the link between them. “You could fight as an Altin,” Otabek suggests. They haven’t actually discussed this. “If you want to.”

“I... could,” Yuri considers. “I could, couldn’t I?” Then he shakes his head. “Anyway, that wasn’t why I wanted to show you that.” Otabek feels the turn in the direction of his thoughts. “Yakov’s priority is heirs. If I’m not considered illegitimate – by the crown, anyway – and Katsudon’s sister’s kids _are_ , by his standards, and we’re about to get married, you know what that makes Enke and Mongke?”

It takes a minute for Otabek to follow that one through. The convolutions of family trees have never been something he’s particularly used to tracing.

“....oh.” He says.

“Mmmm.”

There are many factors to unpick there. It certainly makes the closing off of Mila’s tournament to only men feel less ‘necessary’, loathe as he is to use that word.

“Are you going to tell her?” Beka asks.

“Who, Roza?”

Otabek blinks. “I was thinking of Mila, but you’re right, I should...”

“Fuck,” Yuri is staring at him, wide-eyed. “I... _Mila_.” He collapses back on the bed, his hands over his face. The melodrama is not ironic. “Fuck!”

They should be used to the emotional complications of political decisions. They are not.

“Yes,” Otabek says. Yuri does not respond.

-

There is a man on the floor. On his own, he would be a very small, dark blot in the centre of a large, bright, airy room. However it seems like half the city got there before Roza did, and instead he’s at the centre of a mass of people. Roza hurries down the steps towards them.

Elve is beside him. Roza can’t see what she’s doing and she’s not sure she wants to. This is the new floor of the new hall in the new city of Almatu, and there is a brand new stain on it right underneath where the main is lying. It smells less pleasantly like fresh wood and paint, and more like metal.

“Why hasn’t he been taken to the hospital?” Roza demands. The cluster of people who had not previously noticed her presence parts at the sound of her voice. The stragglers part at the sight of her crown. At least they’ve given the man some space.

“He insisted he come straight to you, Princess,” Qaasaa says, calmly. Roza internally rolls her eyes.

“Haven’t you heard about the Fae?” She asks the man on the floor, slightly exasperatedly. He’s unshaved, as travellers often are, and considerably greyer than most people who spend their lives outside. That would be the blood loss.

He notes the crown, and then the tunic and breeches that Isabella had explained would be seen as rather plain in any other court, but which Roza finds are most practical when her days currently include a lot of movement. After all, her job is to get things done well, and she doesn’t have the time to spare to look pretty doing them. She watches him judging her, and sighs internally. This would be Beka’s issue, if he were here. Although she supposes she’s going to have to get used to that. Again.

“It’s why I came,” the messenger says, in the kind of slightly reproachful voice that suggests he hadn’t been expected to be scolded by a princess, much less for heroically trying to reach her despite possibly mortal wounds. “Your majesty,” he adds, quickly. Evidently he hadn’t been impressed by her lack of regal dress. Roza thinks he’s an idiot.

“Well then why are you attempting to martyr yourself on the floor of my hall instead of giving the message to someone much closer to wherever you were injured?” She says. “I’m afraid if it was a secret message, there’s no such thing as a secret here. That’s not how we do things.”

“It wasn’t a secret,” he says, “I was instructed to deliver my message to the princess, and apparently someone else was so keen to have it they stabbed me for it.”

_Or our country is such a mess right now that you just happened to fall foul of some bandits who thought they’d be able to sell it to me_ , Roza thinks.

“So you didn’t attempt to tell any of the Fae who might have passed it on to me?” _He has an accent_ , she thinks, _he’s not from anywhere nearby_. The habit of thinking ‘aloud’ comes easily now, and she knows Elve is listening, even as she busies herself attempting to staunch the bleeding.

The man does not answer this question. Suddenly Roza realises why. Or perhaps Elve does. It’s hard to tell, sometimes.

“You don’t believe in Fae magic,” she says.

“Well,” the man looks awkwardly at Elve, who is busy weaving hemp bandages out of thin air, “There have been so many rumours, and very little evidence, and things can get twisted.” He rallies, somewhat, finding somewhere else to place to blame for what he seems to have realised is a bit of an offence. “I was ordered to deliver my message to you, and you alone. I could hardly go back and say I’d told a random person on the street who had promised me that they’d send you a message and... well.” He has the decency to look slightly corrected. “You must admit, it does sound a little...”

“Yes, alright,” Roza sighs. The logic is sound, although she refuses to commend him for it. “What is your message, anyway? I hope it was worth bleeding all over my new floor for. People are superstitious, and we haven’t even finished this one properly yet.”

-

Deciding that Yuri might need his head to himself for a minute, Otabek concentrates elsewhere.

Roza isn’t there. This isn’t unusual in itself. Roza had adjusted about as well to having her head full of people all the time as he had, which is to say, not at all. It’s still slightly disconcerting. Sometimes she’s busy when they’d usually catch up, and he isn’t usually busy enough for that to be a problem, but, usually, somebody else would have let him know by now. He concentrates a little harder, and reaches out to her. She doesn’t respond. It’s not that she isn’t there – she’s just blocking him.

Yuri notices.

“What is it?”

“I haven’t spoken to Roza today. Now I can’t reach her at all.”

Yuri sits up.

“That’s...” Otabek speaks to Roza every day. A break in the pattern is unlikely to mean anything good.

-

_“It was close,”_ Qaasaa thinks. _“Not far outside the city. They didn’t want his message. They wanted to kill him.”_

_“What for? To make the road seem dangerous?”_ Elve suggests.

_“It is dangerous, now they’re targeting it. We’ll lose trade.”_

The man lying on the bed is watching them talk – Roza knows it looks odd to an outsider, a conversation with all the body language but none of the words. You’d think they were talking in eye-patterns if you didn’t know better.

Roza interjects. _“Did they know who he was?”_

_“I doubt it. They just got lucky.”_

_And we got unlucky,_ Roza thinks. Of all the people – of all the possible travellers they’ve had through that a group of unhappy northerners could have attacked to try and put people off coming to the new city, it had to be this one. They may have done a far better job than they thought they had.

Qaasaa takes her leave, and Elve sits down to watch the mages work.

“So?” The messenger asks, evidently deciding that he’s less likely to be interrupting now.

“I haven’t decided anything yet,” Roza says, severely. “We have a council to address. This is not a decision to be made lightly.” _If the offer is still open after your experience,_ she thinks.

_“We should talk to Otabek,”_ Pascus suggests, from wherever she happens to be right now. _“He’s familiar with these events. Also he’s been trying to get your attention for about an hour and I think you’re worrying him.”_

Roza sighs. This is true, she knows. She had heard, she’d just been... preoccupied. Well, she doesn’t need to prove herself to the messenger, but it can’t hurt.

She sits down on a nearby chair, closes her eyes, and says;

_“Beka?”_

She feels his relief immediately.

_“Roza? Are you okay?”_

_“Busy morning,”_ she says, and knows that what she says next will be relayed back to the messenger’s employers. She could speak to her brother in their mother tongue, but the messenger speaks Common and so Common it is. _“There’s a band of northerners unhappy with the peace treaty attacking the road to Almatu. We’ve been hearing whispers for a while and Tarkhan sent out a few scouts, but we heard nothing until they attacked a messenger this morning.”_

She’s watching the messenger, more surreptitiously than he’s watching her. Most likely he grew up with mage magic. Most nobles do. But she still remembers the first time she’d seen someone healed. That, she imagines, is what he feels watching her talk to nobody.

Either that or he thinks she’s totally insane.

_“Are they hurt?”_ Otabek asks, more political concern than personal.

_“He has more nobility in him than sense and it nearly killed him, but Elve got to him before too many of his vital organs fell out and I think most of them are back inside now.”_

The messenger makes a noise of displeasure. Evidently the royals he’s used to dealing with are more polite. Roza glares him into silence.

_“Roza is he in the room with you?”_

_“I’m in the hospital, yes.”_ This is the only area of Roza’s attitude towards her governing that they disagree on. She can feel Beka’s exasperation, though he says nothing.  _“He nearly died on my floor, I reserve the right to call him an idiot for it. Anyway, we think this message is your area of expertise.”_

That piques his interest.

_“How can I help?”_

_“Well, he says he’s from the Assissian Championship. They wanted to know if we’d be willing to host it in Almatu next year.”_

_“Yes!”_

Roza startles a little at Yuri’s shout.

_“Hi Yuri,”_ she says, wryly.

_“Well,”_ Otabek’s voice is tinted with amusement. _“It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea. Depending on the time of year and how many people they’d be expecting.”_

_“They haven’t given us any details yet. They just want to know if we’re interested.”_

_“That’s fair.”_ Otabek pauses. _“How many people were in the party that attacked him?”_

_“About four,”_ Roza says, _“Although Tarkhan says that he doubts that’s all of them. Batu had a lot of sympathisers, and just because he’s dead doesn’t mean that his ideas are.”_

_“But there are ways to protect that line of road. Do we have the means?”_

_“We can spare the soldiers,”_ Roza says. _“Are we interested, then?”_

There’s a pause. She suspects that Otabek is talking to Yuri, although she’s not privy to the conversation.

 

“Will you have the infrastructure in place?” Yuri says, trying to quell the immediate excitement. He had not intended to interrupt the conversation.

“Again, it depends on the time of year.” Otabek shakes his head. “But if we do, then... well, it would do what the opening ceremony we had planned would do, but on a wider scale.”

Yuri grins.

He’d never thought he’d make it to a championship. Not after the tournament. And now there’s a chance that he’d get to fight in one in the city he’s helped to found.

“It sounds like a good idea to me,” he says.

 

_“In theory.”_ Otabek says. _“We can only say that we’re interested in theory, and it would depend on the time of year and the rate of building and a lot of other factors... but in theory, yes, we could say we’re interested.”_

_“Very interested,”_ Yuri adds.

Roza grins.

_“I thought so. I’ll run it past the council, and hopefully they’ll be able to give us some predictions to send him back with. I’ve already sent someone to go and find Tarkhan. We’ll need to pay close attention to that group of troublemakers.”_

She turns back to the messenger.

“It’s unlikely the council will go against the King,” she says. “We’re open about our politics here. Would you like to come to the meeting?”

It will be, she knows, an eye-opening experience. They’ve moved the council already, the ten of its members, and all of the others. Sometimes they may hold quieter meetings at the palace, but this is an event that would affect the city, and therefore the city will be invited to take part.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk,” the messenger says, politely.

“You will,” Elve pats him on the shoulder.

-

“We should set a date to leave,” Otabek says, considering. “I’m going to be needed in Almatu.”

Yuri rolls away from him, and picks up his broken quiver.

“I have to stay until Mila’s tournament,” he says. “Can you wait that long?”

Otabek considers this. It’s a little over two weeks away, and he’d planned to travel back over the land bridge anyway. Waiting would mean the earliest he’d be back would be in about two months’ time. By then they’ll know whether or not the Championship will be held in Almatu, and also whether or not the band of northerners are going to be a serious issue. Six months would be too long. By then it would be too late to act. But two, even three, should be manageable.

“Yes.”

“Good.” Yuri looks up. His expression is flat. The emotion behind it has coloured the excitement of before. “You know if there is a championship, Yakov will want to go. It’ll be an excuse to get a look at the children.”

And more, possibly. Yuri doesn’t know to what degree his father will interfere. He doesn’t know to what degree he trusts him not to. Based on his own childhood, he doesn’t have high hopes.

 

_“One more thing.”_ Otabek’s voice says, in the back of Roza's head.

Oh, right, he had been trying to get hold of her. She blinks at the street in front of the hospital, trying to focus on his voice as the cobbles pass under her feet. 

_“Yes?”_

_“The crown of Rusiki is going to continue to recognise Yuri as legitimate.”_

_“Good for Yuri?”_

_“Perhaps you should tell Tarkhan than Enke and Mongke are possible heirs to the Rus throne.”_

Roza blinks.

“Oh, _hell_.”


	3. Breaking Links

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To put it bluntly, Yuri is a mess. His hair is unbrushed, and he has a leaf in his fringe, and he doesn’t look like he’s slept. It’s entirely possible that he’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, although it’s not something Otabek pays particular attention to so he can’t be sure. But his voice is sure, steady and fast. It reminds Otabek of the way people make battle plans.

Yuri is quiet. This is not, as general rumour would have believe, an unusual occurrence. General rumour does have a tendency to fail to scratch the surface of people, and yet get to the bottom of any mysterious or scandalous situation almost immediately. Such is life at court. Even one as small as this - perhaps especially at one as small as this. 

Not that Yuri’s silence is a secret. Anyone who had spent any time on an archery range would know that. Besides the thud of the arrows or the occasional grunts of exertion, success, or failure, the range is often as silent when in use as it is late at night. Of course, if Yuri had trained silently for four hours, no doubt the word passed around would not be of his dedication or his concentration or skill, but of the one shot that flew slightly left and drew an expletive. 

Otabek had learned fairly young that when people who are generally quiet choose to make themselves heard, they are usually listened to - or at least noticed, and sometimes heard, and occasionally listened to. It’s not the same in reverse. Nobody listens to silences. It takes training and a certain awareness to be the person at the table who watches the listeners rather than the speakers. It also takes a certain kind of mind to be able to do that without forgetting some of what the speaker had been saying. Thus, when people who are generally talkative fall quiet, it often goes unnoticed.

Otabek has become familiar with Yuri’s quietness. Not just when he’s arching. Right now, for example. Yuri is resting his head on Otabek’s shoulder, as he often does. Otabek has tried pointing out that he’ll hurt his back eventually, to no avail. Beyond that, he hasn’t protested. Yuri has a habit of working his arms around Beka’s chest, and Otabek has been looking after himself for too long to not appreciate someone else holding him together for a bit. The trade-off, of course, is that sometimes Yuri needs a little help holding his own life together. And Yuri's coping mechanisms are a little different. 

Ostensibly, they are up here to fly Ariya. In reality, she enjoys the freedom of the exercise just as much as they enjoy being released from the confines of castle life. Ariya still wheels above them, but unguided now. Otabek has been watching her, and he can feel that Yuri’s still keeping a thought spare to follow her. There’s not much left to say now, not much technique left to share on either of their sides, so over time coming up here has become an excuse, rather than an exercise. This is a quiet time for Yuri too. He likes to think.

Beka doesn’t mind - he enjoys Yuri’s silence as much as he enjoys teaching or learning from him. But it is still spring, which means that Otabek has been facing the wind and Yuri, tucked behind him, has not. There’s only so much his rather slim body can do to keep Beka warm - especially with his hands under Beka’s tunic, which causes it to ride up a little. The exposed skin is no longer comfortable.

“Yura.”

“Mmm?”

Yuri's voice is a soft vibration. He had been so deep in thought it had begun to border on meditation. Now, awoken, his presence seems closer again. His hair curls where it rests over Otabek’s collarbone. It is back to the length of the bob it had been when Otabek first met him, and now he can feel the tips tickling at his neck. Yuri had exalted in the freedom to grow his hair, but once it had got to a certain length, realised that it was impractical. It’s… distracting.

If Otabek had been listening, what he would have heard Yuri thinking about was his sister.

It had taken Yuri too long to persuade Mila to come with them at the weekend, much as she’d needed the trip. And it had been nice, he supposes, because she hadn’t spoken to him for an entire week before that and that was more than vaguely worrying. Not enough to do anything about it, at first. But she’d found them in the stables as they were preparing to leave, and it was enough for her behaviour over the subsequent trip to Vera’s grave to bother him.

Mila is loud. In volume and in… volume. Volume as in sound level, and volume as in the amount of words that she is capable of saying in one go without running out of things to say. Her main (and he suspects token) protest against joining them was not wanting to be a third wheel. Yuri had laughed her off. Between the two of them, there is never a moment’s silence. (Which was why, incidentally, they only ever duelled together in training. Yuri liked to shoot in silence and with Mila it was never, ever silent). If anything, it would be Otabek who wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgeways.

But Mila was… quiet. Oh, sure, she gets preoccupied sometimes (usually over one of the girls at court) and she is just as capable of knife-edge focus as any good knight, but it’s usually much more short-lived. Then all weekend, she had been nearly silent. Occasionally he had caught her watching him, but at his demands of “what?” she had only shrugged. He couldn’t tease or taunt her into rising to him. He couldn’t draw her into a debate. Even Otabek hadn’t managed to interest her in a story. Not for want of trying - he’d even brought up the siren one, which Mila had begged him for after Roza had teased it and then refused to tell it, but not even that worked.

She hadn’t been listless, exactly. Just… elsewhere. Yuri knows why, and he gets why. The problem is, he can’t think of anything to do about it. The forest stretches out before them, the river just past it, and because the East battlements are his favourites, the mountain range beyond that. He refocuses on it.

“It’s cold,” Otabek says.

Yuri, having reached no conclusions, concedes. Perhaps he’ll talk to Nikolai.

“I want tea. Do you want tea?” He says, pulling away, and lifting his arm, preparing to call Ariya in. “It’ll warm you up.”

He doesn’t get any further. They had both heard the footsteps at the same time.

Mila appears at the top of the battlements. She pauses when she sees they are both already turned to her. But then she crosses her arms over her body, legs slightly spread, as if readying for a fight. The slight wind catches her hair, blowing it across her face. Usually she’d move it back, but today she lets it rest there. Otabek, not oblivious to her situation, wonders whether the fact that she hasn’t done her hair is a bad sign. Yuri is concentrating more on what the wind might be hiding. Mila’s expression is…

“Yuri,” Her gaze flickers between the two of them. “Can I speak to you privately?”

“Sure.” Yuri pulls his glove off without calling Ariya down, and hands it off to Beka.

“No, I mean can you turn the thing off? So nobody can listen?”

 _Ah_ , Yuri thinks. _Perhaps that’s what she’d been expecting to fight over._

“I won’t listen,” Otabek says. “You have my word.”

Mila's expression becomes a frown. “I know you can. You can cope without each other for five minutes.”

Yuri glances at Beka. She’s right. At least partially. Yuri has now mastered the art of closing down the Fae link without damaging anything. He does it fairly regularly - with the rest of them. Not with Otabek. It’s not that they can’t. It’s just that since they’ve re-established it, they haven’t felt the need to. As far as he knows, neither of them have either considered it. He does now.

 _“You okay with that?”_ He asks.

Otabek is thinking. There is a slight nagging of something uncomfortable at the idea. He hadn’t much liked being separated from Yuri, and though after months of that it would no doubt take them more than these few weeks to get fed up with each other, he also supposes it’s something they’ll have to face eventually. Better, then, that they get used to doing so amiably rather than risking another fight. Maybe it’s something he even should have considered before now.

The point is, anyway, that Mila is entitled to her privacy and it’s not her fault that it’s a slightly sensitive subject.

 _“I think so,”_ he says.

Yuri pulls back slowly. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel very odd. It’s just gradually quieter, and then… well, it’s like Yuri has walked out of the room. There are still others there, although not close by, but like being left alone at a party, the surrounding conversations of the other Fae are suddenly snatches of conversation he picks up, rather than a background murmur.

Yuri is watching him. Otabek nods. As Yuri disappears down the stairs after his sister, Otabek turns back to Ariya’s curving flight.

“Go get warm, idiot!” Yuri yells back up the stairs. “Don’t wait up there!”

Smiling, Otabek calls Ariya down. Maybe they don’t _need_ a link to be able to read each other so much anymore. Maybe Yuri doesn’t need to be inside his head to understand him.

It’s a comforting thought.

 

-

 

They are gone for a fair amount of time. Otabek adjusts to the silence faster than he thought he would. For the novelty, he draws back from the link completely. It is rather like leaving a busy room, he thinks. If he should change his mind, he could just walk back in. But closing the ‘door’ between them gives him a little peace.

Yuri had left a book of what appears to be local folklore on the table by his side of the bed, but while Otabek can understand the spoken language, he is less familiar with the strange alphabet of glyphs. The book had been marked at a page of what appears to be the story of a benevolent elemental spirit. The marker is a note in what he thinks could be Darya’s handwriting. She writes like paper is expensive, the letters small and cramped, the gaps between words almost invisible, and right up the edge of the piece of paper. He can read even less of that than the deliberately ornate hand of the book. The quiet does make it easier to concentrate though, and he’s out of practice. So he picks up the book and a piece of paper, and sets about translating it.

About four paragraphs in, when he’s trying to figure out whether the ‘spirit’ had actually caused grass to grow from the old man’s head or whether he’s mistranslating some kind of idiom, Yuri comes back. Otabek is somewhat surprised to hear his footsteps before the link returns. Initially, he thinks it might be someone else. But it is Yuri who opens the door, Yuri who shuts it behind him quietly, his expression distracted. He barely even glances at Otabek.

“Is she okay?” Otabek asks, somewhat pointlessly. He’d have had to be blind not to notice that Mila is not, in fact, okay. She’s been snappish for weeks, ever since he’d arrived in Rusiki, probably longer. He misses her sense of humour.

“No,” Yuri says, sharply. “Yakov’s just confirmed that he’s only accepted men to compete in her tournament. And Mila doesn’t like men.” He pauses. “Well, she likes them to be in love with her, but she doesn’t reciprocate it.”

“Is she upset with you?”

“And Victor, and Georgi, and you and Katsudon and Lilia and Yakov. Everyone.”

Otabek puts his pen down.

“So what are we going to do?”

Yuri stares at him.

“What?”

“How are we going to get her out of it?”

“We’re not.”

Yuri’s expression is unfathomable. Right now Otabek would really like to know what’s going on inside his head.

“What?”

“She’s illegitimate,” Yuri says, flatly. “If she doesn’t get married, where will she go?”

“She can live with us.”

Yuri sighs, although there’s a slight smile to it.  

“Yeah, right, but Rusiki also needs heirs.”

“Don’t Enke and Mongke count?”

Yuri snaps. It's sudden. Unexpected. The shock of it is much more potent because Beka has been able to read every mood coming for a month.

“Look, I think this is as dumb as you do, but what do you expect me to do about it? You know what Yakov’s like. He’ll want control over their upbringing, and he’s not going to get it.”

Otabek falters. He had not expected opposition on this, not from Yuri of all people. He turns away. In the silence, his head is suddenly echoing empty.

“It’s dumb,” Yuri repeats, suddenly softer. “It’s really fucking dumb. But what can I do to change it? Yelling at Yakov doesn’t achieve much, does it? That’s basically it. That’s the only option. And she hasn’t even bothered fighting him on it.”

“We could…”

“Otabek,” he’s back to snapping. “I said there’s nothing we can do. We’re not just people.”

Of course it would be a huge risk for both of them to go against Yakov now. To act against his orders would be extremely stupid, only barely more so than actively voicing an opposition. The knowledge of that doesn’t make Otabek any happier about the resolution. Disquieted, he reaches out without really meaning to. It doesn’t matter - Yuri stops it.

“I’d like some space. For a bit.”

That’s fair. Yuri not having space to himself had been the problem the first time. Otabek had been _glad_ when he’d found out Yuri could control it. Besides, Otabek would hardly force it.

“Alright,” he says, and picks up his pen again. He wants to diffuse this before it festers between them. “Is saying that the grass grows out of someone’s head a way of calling them stupid?”

Yuri sits up, evidently happy to be distracted.

“No. What are you reading?”

“I’m trying to read your book, but my cyrillic is rusty.”

Picking himself up off the bed, Yuri comes and looks over his shoulder.

“Oh, that bit. No, it’s literal. Although you could say he was probably pretty unwashed if there was enough dirt in his hair for her to grow grass in it.”

Otabek pulls a face.

“I know,” Yuri grins, and puts his chin on the top of Otabek’s head, his arms coming to rest on Beka’s shoulders. Otabek breathes out. Often Yuri’s temper is short-lived, and it’s rarely aimed at Beka even if he sometimes gets the collateral, but it’s a relief to know it was the subject of his questions and not the questions themselves that had bothered Yuri. “He was definitely an idiot though,” Yuri is saying, oblivious. “He spends most of the story saying that she’s nothing like any spirit he’s ever heard of, and yet never stops to think that maybe that’s because she’s something entirely different.”

Otabek’s finger follows back through to a line he’d had to leave empty.

“Is that what this says?”

“Oh, yeah, look,” Yuri reaches down, and takes the pen from Otabek’s unresisting fingers. “He’s been writing this character backwards. It’s a stylistic thing. So this means…” he starts to scribble.

“That’s not helpful of him,” Otabek says, with just a hint of a grumble.

“Good thing you’ve got me then,” Yuri says, underlining the new bits of the sentence that he’s written out with the characters the right way around, and some other minor adjustments. The book is possibly quite old. Otabek suspects that Yuri might have just brought some of the language up to date for him.

He hums, writing out the translation underneath. “So was she Fae?”

“Darya thinks so. She noticed it first because this one stands out from the rest of the stories in the book. It’s mostly just sad, whereas the others are all gore and murder and so on.”

“It’s sad?” Otabek hadn't got very far into the story. 

“Oh yeah. See,” Yuri puts his finger on the page. “She has to go back to the waterfall because she protects it. So she goes back every winter and gets trapped in the ice, and every spring he goes and thaws her out again. And of course they fall in love and have children and so on and so forth,” he skips about three paragraphs with a wave of his hand, “But then he starts getting jealous, because he’s getting older but she’s still young and beautiful. So he doesn’t tell anyone about the waterfall in case someone else finds her and she falls in love with them instead, and then one winter he dies, and when spring comes there’s nobody to thaw her out. So it all goes back to the way it was at the beginning, when the river never thaws and the frost never melts. Then the grass doesn’t grow, all the animals die, and then the people either have to leave or they starve.”

“That’s still a bit gruesome,” Otabek feels the need to point out.

“Yeah, maybe don’t read any of the others,” Yuri says. “Anyway, it says that the woman stayed frozen there not ‘for all eternity’, like most stories do, but ‘until this day’. It even says that people still go looking for her and the hidden waterfall, and the ruins of the village are still visible in summer. And her children’s children are as white as snow, and have strange powers.”

Otabek studies Darya’s bookmark note.

“So, does Darya think there’s some truth in it?”

“Actually, she thinks the woman might be one of our ancestors.”

So the afternoon passes, if not without incident, then at least without it feeling like much has changed.

Yuri shuts him out for the rest of the day. The day becomes two, then three. Otabek waits. He doesn’t ask. Yuri will say when he’s ready. Even when Otabek catches Mila watching them interact over dinner, he pretends not to, and only allows himself to wonder whether she knows about it later on. But he doesn’t ask Yuri about Mila again. Every time it gets brought up, Yuri gets irritated. With the castle in full preparation mode for her tournament, there are plenty of things to agitate him without Otabek adding to it. He doesn’t want an argument. At least, not a pointless one where nothing said would change anything but their animosity towards each other. If he thought it would achieve anything, he might have pushed the point, but Yuri had been completely resolute, and possibly upset about being so. That’s not a state of mind Otabek wants to tackle. Not without an invitation. But neither does he lay the thought to rest.

Nothing else has changed. They talk. They train. Yuri curls around him at night like he always does, and keeps the spring chill at bay. But Otabek is aware that something is bothering him. He wants to talk to Yuri about it, like he usually would. He doesn’t.

Nikolai notices first. Much as Otabek usually enjoys his company, for once the three of them find they have little to say to each other.

“We should go to the meadow,” Otabek suggests at last, thinking that all he wants to do is curl up in Yuri’s arms, where it’s easier to pretend that everything is fine, and have an early night.

“Sure,” Yuri shrugs.

It’s something they’ve been doing ever since Otabek got back. It takes both of their strength to revitalise the grass. Nikolai is grateful, and for that, Otabek doesn’t mind the strain. Tonight, when they are standing on the edge of the paddock, Otabek goes to put his hand on Yuri’s shoulder, as usual.

“No,” Yuri says, “I’m okay.”

Otabek says nothing. He just steps back.

It’s too much. The struggle is not visible in Yuri’s face, but it doesn't need to be. The cropped flowers bud slowly, a section at a time, like a wave rising across the field. It's beautiful, in a way. It's not at all what it usually looks like. There’s no way to hide that from Nikolai.

One of the does dips her head, and takes a mouthful of mushrooms that hadn't even finished sprouting. Otabek has the sudden and strange urge to laugh. Yuri does not look amused. He looks exhausted. They walk back to the hut in silence afterwards, their goodbyes subdued. The silence is full of unasked questions.

Yuri barely even touches Otabek as they travel back. The moment they land, he leaves Georgi to deal with the moment of travelling sickness.

“I need to go the library.”

By the time the nausea has passed and Otabek can look up again, Yuri is long gone. Georgi is giving him a curious look. But he doesn’t ask anything, and for that Otabek is grateful, because he doesn’t have any answers.

Alone, back in the room, he washes and dresses for bed, writes to JJ, writes to Leo, runs out of people to write to, and gives up on trying to concentrate. It’s a challenge to write about anything interesting when his thoughts want to be elsewhere. He gets up, dresses again, takes a torch (because it’s dark by now) and goes to the library.

Yuri isn’t there.

Otabek goes back to bed, tries to sleep, and discovers that he can’t. Being alone with his thoughts isn’t much fun, either. They start filling in answers to questions like _so where did he go? And why did he lie?_

Refusing to indulge in the questions or wallow in the potential answers, Otabek goes all the way back to the library, in his pyjamas because there’s not going to be anyone up this late to care, and finds a particularly boring book. He takes it back to bed. When he’s about halfway through the third chapter, he realises he has no idea what it’s about. Or what it’s even called.

_Why is he avoiding me?_

Then Yuri comes back.

“You’re still awake,” he says, in a tone of some surprise. He’s standing somewhat slumped, as though the effort of even being awake is dragging at him.

“I am.”

Yuri undresses in silence, with a little difficulty. Like his limbs are heavy. When he crawls into bed, Otabek puts the book down, and blows out the candle.

“You’re upset with me,” Yuri says.

Otabek says nothing.

“I’m sorry, Beka.”

He doesn’t say what for. He doesn’t reach out to him. Eventually, Otabek rolls over, and pulls the blanket up. Without Yuri’s warmth, he needs it.

 

-

 

Otabek stops pretending not to watch Mila. She’s miserable. He watches Yuri too. He’s not, but he’s distanced, distracted. At first, he had thought that maybe the two were linked, but they’re barely talking to each other. Not in a deliberate way, like they’ve fought, but in a thoughtless kind of way, as siblings sometimes do.

It’s not that he and Yuri disagree, exactly. They disagree on several things, and it’s not usually much of an issue. It’s that this situation is causing Mila direct and personal suffering in a way that Yuri should absolutely understand. It’s that Otabek does not feel powerless, and yet Yuri refuses to see that it’s even possible to do anything.

The problem is, Otabek thinks, that Yuri might not be the person Otabek thought he was. He’d heard it was bound to happen, of course. That doesn’t make it any less of a shock, or any less miserable. The fact that Yuri is very obviously doing something that he feels necessary to keep secret isn’t helping at all. The other Fae have started asking Otabek if he knows what’s going on. Having to say ‘no’ and having to experience their reactions really isn’t improving matters.

Otabek continues to lose track of Yuri. An otherwise predictable routine has been broken. Suspecting that Yuri does not want to be found, Beka doesn’t waste time looking for him. Instead, he just tries to fit the rest of his life around the absences. It’s not always very easy. By himself, there isn’t much of a life for him here.

Yuri returns late that evening. Trying not to sound accusatory, or to imply that he was waiting for him, Beka says,

“Are we going to visit Nikolai tonight?”

They usually go two or three times a week, but it’s getting late.

“We’ve been,” Yuri says, dumping his haphazardly repaired quiver on the bed. The armourer didn’t have any suitable spares for Yuri to use in the meantime, so they’d simply done their best in the shortest possible time.

“Right,” Otabek says, looking at the neat line of stitches rather than Yuri’s face. Whether Yuri means that they’ve been already this week, or whether they went without him, the dismissal is clear.

So the next evening, Otabek goes to visit Nikolai on his own. Georgi is curious, but Otabek reminds him that they’re all busy, and leaves it at that. Nikolai gets the same few words, said lightly and delivered with an apology, in an attempt to make it seem less unusual.

Already preparing tea, Nikolai nods and says nothing about it. Ignoring the itching question of whether or not Yuri had come without him, Otabek drinks his tea.

As it turns out, the evening is a pleasant one. Nikolai is feeling nostalgic. Stories of his childhood, things Otabek has never been privy to, fill the quiet hours. The wild wastes, a larger clan who had wandered much farther and had their fair share of small adventures - in Nikolai’s steady voice, the smoke could seem to curl into the shapes of the herds, their antlers rocking with their long migrations.

It is different, without Yuri, but not unpleasant. Just… quieter. Nikolai is a quietly-spoken man until he’s roused, and Otabek, generally being softly-spoken himself, doesn’t inject the same energy into him that Yuri does.

“Yuri told me a fairytale,” Otabek says, eventually, “about a woman who looked after a waterfall.”

“Oh, I know that one,” Nikolai says, derisively. “If she was Fae, which maybe she was, then she wasn’t trapped there. No Fae has ever needed the help of a human. It’s only the humans who ever depended on the Fae.”

He almost sounds bitter. Surprised by his tone, an the answer to a question he hadn’t asked, Otabek doesn’t elaborate, but turns the conversation back to safer ground. When he makes to leave, Nikolai presses some of the leftover yak’s milk into Otabek’s hand.

“The value of home comforts,” he says, with a little more emphasis than he might normally have done. It gives Otabek pause.

“Would you be able to spare the time to teach me how to make pirozhki before we leave?” He asks. It's something he's been meaning to ask for a while, and that had seemed a good an openng as any. 

“Yuri knows how to make pirozhki,” Nikolai says. For someone with a tendency towards bluntness, he still manages to inject some extra grump into it. It takes Otabek a second to work out how to straighten out the misunderstanding. The question had not been asked for Yuri’s sake, although it’s an idea he’ll consider now.

“I’d prefer to learn from you,” he says. “If you’re willing.”

Nikolai has treated Otabek like another grandson, and Otabek, having had precious little positive contact with his own grandfather, hadn’t minded. 

“Well,” Nikolai says, his gruffness softer now, “I think I can find the time.”

“Thank you. I look forward to it.”

“You know,” Nikolai stands to let him out. “It was Yuri’s grandmother who taught me. It’s a bit of a family recipe.”

Had he been expecting it, Otabek might have been slightly more prepared. He doesn’t think Nikolai notices his reaction, but the old man is smiling, either at him or the memory.

“It’s an honour,” Otabek bows slightly.

Nikolai does smile directly at him then. It’s the kind of expression that makes his face seem ten years younger. The kind of expression that Yuri inspires so easily. Otabek turns to go.

“Otabek.”

He turns in the doorway. It is snowing again, just enough that he closes the door a little to keep the worst of it out, though he leaves his hand on the handle. Nikolai has followed him, just one step towards the door being nearly enough to cross the entire space.

“My Yurotchka…” he pauses, looking for the right words. “I am very proud of him. But there are some things I didn’t know how to teach him, and I think we failed-” he pauses again. “He was right to go with you. He has grown up. But these… we do not stop growing, or learning. And there are things he needs to learn that will not come easily.”

Otabek doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s incredibly vague, but Nikolai’s expression suggests that it was hard for him to even say that much, and pressing him seems rude. Besides, he doesn’t have time to think of a suitable reply before Georgi’s magic is tugging at him.

“Look after yourself!” Nikolai calls, as he usually does. This time, however, it echoes in Otabek’s ears as he lands back in Georgi’s study.

Georgi pats him on the back as he leans over his knees and attempts to retain the contents of his stomach. Once the nausea has passed, Georgi hands back the bottle that Otabek had thrust at him rather hurriedly.

“Thank you. My apologies.”

“No, no, I understand,” Georgi says. “What is it, anyway?”

“Tea,” Otabek says, his mind still elsewhere. Somewhat dubiously, Georgi eyes the cream-coloured liquid. “Yak’s milk to make tea with,” Otabek clarifies.

“Nikolai has a yak?”

“Her name is Buuz.”

It takes Georgi a moment to work that one out. His tone, when he does, is only more bemused.

“Her name is ‘meat-filled dumpling’?”

“Just dumpling,” Otabek corrects, “Apparently it’s a term of endearment. Although he will probably also have her meat when she no longer produces milk.”

Georgi sighs, evidently regretting his curiosity. Hoping he won’t ask who named her, Otabek very politely, but pointedly, puts his hand on the doorknob. Shaking his head, Georgi goes back to his book.

“Goodnight, Otabek.”

“Goodnight.”

It is not.

Otabek had half-expected a row, but Yuri isn’t in the bedroom. Becoming more accustomed to this, Otabek manages to fall asleep before he returns.

The morning is no better. When he wakes, Yuri is there. There are no questions about Otabek’s absence the night before. Perhaps he hadn’t even noticed. They barely speak at all, but knowing Yuri in the mornings, that isn’t so unusual. Even so, it grates.

Mila isn’t at breakfast. She isn’t at lunch, either. While neither of these are particularly unusual, when she doesn’t turn up at dinner Otabek makes a point of asking one of the servants afterwards whether she’s actually eating at all.

“Don’t worry, your majesty, we’ve made sure there’s food sent to her room.”

“She hasn’t left her room?”

“We don’t think so, your majesty.”

It’s less than a week until her tournament now.

Otabek decides that enough is enough. The slow plan he’s been forming is well overdue. Once again, Yuri isn’t in the bedroom, so Otabek sits back, and opens up the back of his head.

_“Roza?”_

She responds almost immediately.

_“Didn’t we speak this morning?”_

_“Are you busy?”_

_“Why, is it important?”_

_“Yes. It’s about Mila.”_

 

-

 

For once, Yuri actually comes to bed, and Otabek is mildly annoyed by his inconvenient timing. This had not been part of the plan. Thankfully - and that says so much about how things are going - Yuri doesn’t try and touch him. It would have complicated matters considerably.

Instead, Otabek waits until Yuri’s breathing has evened out into a steady pattern. Then he waits another ten, maybe twenty minutes. He isn’t surprised at himself for being able to slip out of bed, to dress in silence, and leave. Perhaps he is surprised by the amount of nerve it takes to be able to do it with Yuri still in the room, asleep, probably expecting to wake up beside him.

Everything after that seems so much easier in comparison. For whatever reason, he is far less afraid of being found out by anyone else than by Yuri. Aisulu and Karzhau both wake quietly, and suffer being saddled without a sound, and with minimal movement. It takes a little longer to track down the bag of rations and the tent that he had hidden in the hayloft earlier in the day, mainly because the hay had been moved around a little. Thankfully nothing had been found, or moved, and Otabek extracts the note he had written to the squires and pins it to the inside of Aisulu’s stable door, invisible to anyone simply walking past.

Only then does he go to Mila’s room. On the way, he finds himself plagued by the knowledge of the situation he’s leaving Yuri in. Their engagement should still protect him, Otabek hopes. Just for long enough for him to think of a way to come back for him. If Yuri would want to go with him, after this.

He stares at Mila’s door. It’s a much shorter walk than he had remembered. He knocks. There is silence. Assuming she is asleep, he knocks a little harder, as loud as he dares without waking anyone else. From inside, there’s a whisper of movement.

Then, “Who is it?” Mila's voice calls, heavy with sleep.

“Otabek.”

“Beka?” She sound surprised.

“Are you decent?”

“Never,” Mila says, as if by reflex, then, “Wait, I’m actually not, hang on a second…”

He waits, patiently, as there’s a slight thump, and then the sounds of shuffling. Eventually, Mila opens her door and peers at him, their two candles the only light in the corridor.

“You’re… wearing your sword?”

Otabek had hoped to catch her before she fell asleep to prevent this kind of not-quite-awake loss of logic.

“You don’t have to go through with this,” he says, as quietly as he can. “Come to Atil-Khazaran. We’ll protect you.”

She stares at him.

“...tonight?”

He had intended to at least give her some warning. But it just hadn't quite worked out, and he hadn't had any reason to think she'd refuse. 

“I’ve packed and saddled the horses.”

“Of course you have,” she says. “And you haven’t talked to Yuri about this?”

Otabek hesitates.

“We have had… a difference of opinion.”

Mila shuts the door in his face. For a moment, all he can do is stare at it in shock. From the inside, there’s a heavy thump. Then she opens it again.

He raises an eyebrow at her.

“You are really something, Altin, you know that?”

The words are almost crushingly familiar. It doesn’t help that her cadence and her accent are so similar to Yuri’s. He says nothing.

Mila sighs. “You have no idea how much this means, you know.” This is not the tone he had expected. She watches him, thoughtful, and then the corner or her lip quirks. “No, you really don’t.” Still, he has no response to that. “Come back tomorrow. I have things to settle. Also, you should tell Yuri what happened tonight.”

“No.” Otabek says, firmly.

“What?”

“I will come back tomorrow night. I will not talk to Yuri,” he clarifies.

“Won’t he know…” she pauses, as if something has occurred to her. It’s possible that she is the last person to notice that he and Yuri are not on the best of terms right now.

“He cut me off,” Otabek says. “He won’t know.”

Mila steps forward, and hugs him. It’s a careful kind of hug, the kind that works around the fact that they are both currently holding burning candles. But it’s sincere.

“I’m sorry,” she says, then steps back. “And thank you. Really. Please, go back to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then she’s gone, and the door is closed. Otabek goes back down to the stables, unsaddles the horses, unpins the notes, and, functioning on autopilot, not enough sleep, and an adrenalin crash, accidentally takes the packed bags back to the room. Only as he’s opening the door does he realise that if he wakes Yuri, he’ll notice them.

Except he won’t, because the bed is empty. Again. Out looking for him, perhaps, or off doing whatever it is that’s been keeping him away. There’s no way of knowing. Yuri doesn’t come back. Otabek sleeps badly, the stress of the decision suddenly given unexpected time to fester. When the sun rises, he is still alone. Deciding that he really doesn’t want to see everyone else at breakfast, Otabek tries to go back to sleep. When that doesn’t work, he decides to go after all, and see if there’s anything left, though he doesn’t much feel like eating.

Just as he’s closing the bedroom door behind him, Yuri appears. The moment he sees Beka, he breaks into a run. Unable to quite process this, Otabek simply stands and waits for him to arrive.

“Oh thank god,” Yuri says, though it’s almost a whisper. He is slightly wild-eyed, his gaze darting around the corridor to make sure they’re alone, and he grabs Beka’s elbow as if needing something to hold himself upright.

There’s a pressure in the back of Otabek’s head. He doesn’t quite manage not to flinch. He doesn’t let Yuri in.

“...shit,” Yuri says, at the block. “Shit, Beka, I’m so sorry, I need to explain…”

“Then explain.”

Yuri’s face moves through a series of emotions. But he doesn’t try again, and he doesn’t force it. He just takes a deep breath, and says,

“We have to go to breakfast together. I can tell you everything properly later but out loud will take ages. We need to turn up, together, now. And possibly come up with a reason why we’re both late.”

Otabek stares at him. To put it bluntly, Yuri is a mess. His hair is unbrushed, and he has a leaf in his fringe, and he doesn’t look like he’s slept. It’s entirely possible that he’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, although it’s not something Otabek pays particular attention to, so he can’t be sure. But his voice is sure, steady and fast. It reminds Otabek of the way people make battle plans.

“Please, Beka. I know I haven’t given you much of a reason to recently, but-” Yuri’s voice shrinks, “Please, trust me. Just this once. I really fucking hope I’ll never have to ask you again.”

Otabek has more questions than answers, but he’s prone to giving people the benefit of the doubt, and Yuri more so. Apart from the past week, he has always trusted him implicitly. Now, even that seems like it could be forgivable, especially since he had evidently been completely prepared to share everything. And Otabek desperately wants a reason to forgive him, even if a tiny whispering voice at the back of his head is saying that it hardly matters - he’s leaving tonight anyway.

Otabek makes his decision. He picks the leaf out of Yuri’s hair and puts it in his pocket so it won’t be found in the hallway later. Then he brushes Yuri’s hair until it lies flat.

“Take a deep breath,” he says. “Do we need to hold hands?”

Yuri relaxes so suddenly that Otabek thinks for a second that he’s about to faint and finds himself moving to grab Yuri’s shoulder, to steady him. It’s unnecessary, but Yuri smiles, so brightly it almost breaks Beka’s heart.

He has no idea what the fuck is going on, but if Yuri keeps smiling like that, tonight is going to hurt more than he could possibly have imagined.

“Uh, we don’t usually do we?” Yuri asks.

“No.”

“Then that’s probably more suspicious.”

“Right.”

Rejecting Yuri’s presence had been an instinct rather than a deliberate choice. Following him down the hallways to the main hall, Otabek realises it was self-preservation too. Yuri’s not the only one with a secret now.

As it turns out, nobody asks them why they’re both late to breakfast. This is perhaps because Victor raises an eyebrow at his brother and this causes Yuri to blush. While the reason might be a slightly different one than the immediate assumption, it stops the rest of them from asking.

Yuri is subdued. For once, he seems to be paying attention to Beka. Otabek, in return, does his best to ignore him. If there is something that Yuri wants to say that he won’t say in front of his family, then it will simply have to wait. And Otabek has no intention of making this worse for himself. He hadn’t exactly had much time to consider the consequences of his decision. The prospect of spending the day with Yuri knowing that come evening he will be leaving him here is not an enjoyable one.

Mila isn’t at breakfast. Otabek is not surprised. It has become painfully obvious that he can’t talk to Yuri about it. That he wouldn’t understand. But Otabek cannot do nothing. It goes against everything he is. His resolution does not waver. 

They eat slowly, and somewhat quietly. Being late, the rest of them are already almost finished, and head off to start their days. Only Yakov remains. Running out of ways to draw it out any longer and under the ire of the servants who have other things to do with their days than wait around for them, he and Yuri stand and make to leave. Then Yakov turns to them.

“Join me this morning, Yuri.”

“Actually, I was going to…”

“This is important.”

Yuri casts a desperate look over his shoulder at Otabek, who can only shrug. So Yuri goes. Cut loose, not sure whether he wants Yuri to find him or not, Otabek retreats to the library, in the vague hope that he will be able to occupy himself until evening. Instead, the sheer exhaustion of a nearly sleepless night catches up with him, and he falls asleep with his head in the pages.

He is woken roughly, by Yakov of all people, shaking his shoulder.

“Have you seen Mila since last night?” He demands.

“No,” Otabek says, without a word of a lie. “I’ve been here since breakfast. What time is it?”

“You missed lunch,” Yakov says, flatly. “Come with me. We’re holding council.”

The council, it turns out, consists of the royal family, a few of the servants, and Darya. Mila is very conspicuously absent.

“The tournament is in two days!” Yakov bellows. “Somebody should have been with her at all times!”

 _Was she a prisoner?_ Otabek thinks, and then realises that nobody can hear him. It’s a hard habit to break.

“But where would she have gone?” Victor asks, in some puzzlement. He’s leaning over the back of a chair, managing to look both intent and relaxed at the same time. In fact, most of them are posed in a manner that seems deliberately non confrontational. Having not witnessed the King’s temper before, Otabek follows their lead. Perhaps concentrating on that might be why he doesn’t give his next sentence due thought before he says it.

“Given the ‘why’, the ‘where’ might have been irrelevant.” He immediately finds all eyes on him.

“And where were you last night?” Yakov snaps.

“In bed,” Yuri puts in before Otabek can respond. “I can vouch for him.” Yuri’s cheeks are slightly pink. Although Beka’s not sure why, it only adds to his case, especially after breakfast. Yakov ignores this.

“And you’re sure he didn’t get up while you were asleep?”

“I’m a light sleeper,” Yuri flat-out lies. Yakov accepts it.

Released from the spotlight, Otabek glances at Yuri, who is very resolutely watching his father’s slow explosion. There is, however, a sense of patience to it. There is a question, unanswered, in the back of Otabek’s head. Yuri’s waiting.

He’ll know. There’s no way Otabek can let him in but still hide the plan from him. It’s not exactly relevant now, if Mila’s gone anyway, but that doesn’t change the fact that the plan had existed. But neither can he hide it forever. Especially not if he no longer needs to.

Otabek relents.

 

_“I need your help,” Mila says, “Please.”_

_“When will she arrive?” Yuri says._

_They’re standing just outside the caste walls, not far from the battlements. This, then, is what Mila had wanted to talk to Yuri about. Although Otabek’s not entirely sure what ‘this’ is yet._

_“She’s on her way, but it’s hard to be exact. I told her to wait in the woods, but you know what dad’s like. I can’t sneak out every night to see if she’s there. There are people watching me.”_

_“And nobody’s watching me.”_

_“Yuri, please. I talked to Darya, she said if there’s something you don’t want someone to know it can just be a blank spot.”_

_“Beka would help, you know. He’s just as against this as I am.”_

_“No! We can’t. The more people who know the more dangerous it becomes. This is my only chance.”_

_“Mila, I don’t think I can hide it from him. It’s not like it’s me who doesn’t want him to know.”_

_Mila dips her head._

_“But I’ve told you the plan now.”_

_Yuri groans, and leans back against the wall. The wind blows off the meadow, bringing with it the fresh, slightly cloying smell of pollen. The stone digs into the back of Yuri’s head. It’s strange, the details you remember._

_“Fuck.” A second passes. Mila looks close to tears. Otabek knows what Yuri’s going to say before he remembers saying it. “Fine. But you owe me a lifetime’s supply of lemon curd and a personal apology to Beka.”_

 

Perhaps Yuri had intended to stop it there, but there’s something else, something that slips through.

 

_Yuri puts his arm out, and pretends the tips of his fingers, where he can’t see them, are just touching Beka’ back. He hates lying next to Otabek and being unable to reach out to him. It’s almost worse than being separated by force, because he’s doing it to himself._

_He’s so exhausted it hurts. His head is ringing with it._

_Just a few more days. Just a few more days, and then he can explain, and the growing distance between them will be closed. He hopes. God, he hopes._

_He wishes there was anyone he could talk to about this, but he doesn’t want to risk Mila’s safety, or break his word. And he can’t tell her that she’s forcing him to put her own happiness above his, because she’s his sister. That’s what you do. He withdraws his hand, rolls over, because it’s easier to hold off that way._

_And Otabek sleeps on, not knowing how close Yuri is to breaking._

 

Otabek stares, sightlessly, at Yakov.

Late nights. Last night, an empty bed, and this morning, Mila was gone.

It’s digging at him. He feels genuinely terrible. Yuri had wanted to trust him, had kept his word to Mila despite the personal cost - now it’s obvious that Yuri had been avoiding him for a damn good reason - and Otabek had been prepared to leave him for it.

 _“You didn’t know,”_ Yuri says.

Otabek closes his eyes, and very pointedly recalls his conversation with Mila the night before. It’s a little more difficult, after being separated, and across the room from one another, but he manages it.

 

_“... see you tomorrow.” Mila says._

 

 _“I know,” Y_ uri thinks, not without amusement. He must feel the question in Beka’s confusion, because he says, _“Look…”_

 

_“She’s ready.” Yuri says. “Are you?”_

_Mila nods, just once. She’s shaking. He doesn’t think it’s because she’d cold. He pulls her into a hug. They don’t know when they’ll next see each other again. They don’t know whether she’ll make it safely. Yuri can only hope to god that all of this was worth it._

_Then somebody knocks on the door._

_They both freeze._

_The knock comes again. Evidently whoever it is is not coming in without being invited._

_“Who is it?” Mila calls, feigning sleepiness._

_“Otabek.”_

_Mila slams her hand over Yuri’s mouth._

_“Beka?” She repeats, disbelieving._ _Glaring at her, Yuri shakes his head just slightly. He hadn’t been going to say anything, and he has no idea why Otabek’s here._

_“Are you decent?” Otabek’s voice says, on the other side of the door._

_“Never,” Mila says, evidently without thinking. Yuri nearly does bite her fingers then. “Wait, I’m actually not,” she calls, letting Yuri go. “Hang on a second…”_

_Mila shoves him under the bed, and pulls a blanket around herself to cover the fact that she’s not wearing a nightdress. Yuri listens, watching the feet at the door from the crack under the bed._

_“You don’t have to go through with this. Come to Atil-khazaran. We’ll protect you.”_

_Yuri has to put his hand over his own mouth. He’d told her. He’d told her Otabek would have helped. He half expects Mila to tell him, then and there, that Yuri is under her bed, waiting to help her sneak out of the castle. God knows it would take some explaining, and he doesn’t even know if they have time, but if..._

_“And you haven’t talked to Yuri about this?” Mila says._

_There’s a slight pause._

_“We have had… a difference of opinion.”_

_Oh god. Oh, god. Yuri had known this was going to suck, but he hadn’t realised quite how much this had hurt Beka. The guilt is sudden, and almost overwhelming. He almost moves without thinking._

_Mila shuts the door. Her foot appears at the edge of the bed, and kicks his fingers back out of sight. Yuri glares at her shins, betrayed._

_When Otabek has gone, Mila drags him back out from under the bed._

_“So we’re not telling him, then,” Yuri whispers, not knowing how far away Beka will be yet. Mila looks wretched, but she shakes her head._

_“No time. Olenka will be in at dawn to wake me. The longer we wait, the more time we lose.”_

_So they go. Mila’s horse is already saddled and waiting outside the gate, where Yuri had left her before he went to ‘bed’._

_Once they’re outside the castle, Mila turns to him._

_“Thank you.”_

_“Go on. The priest knows you’re coming, don’t make him wait.”_

_Still, Mila hovers. The horse’s head is pointing towards the path. Her saddle-bags are bulging, her sword strapped to her waist. The crown, she had left on her dressing table._

_“I am so sorry about Beka,” she says._

_Yuri forces himself to shrug. “I know.”_

_“I could have…”_

_“I’ll talk to him tomorrow, Mila. He’ll understand.” And he will, Yuri thinks, his heart swelling for Otabek’s foolhardy stupidity. Of course he’d do something anyway. Of course he would, otherwise he isn’t the person Yuri thought he was._

_Mila smiles._

_“See you soon, Yuri.”_

_“You better.”_

_He watches as she approaches the forest at a trot. A figure emerges from the edge of the wood to meet her._

 

All attempts to listen to what else is going on have been totally abandoned. They’re only getting away with it because everyone’s attention is so thoroughly diverted.

_“So she’s gone?” Otabek clarifies._

_“Long gone.”_

The relief is palpable. Suddenly the weight of the last few weeks is lifted from his shoulders.

_“Good.”_

_“Otabek Altin,”_ Yuri thinks, which is not at all the reaction Otabek was expecting. _“I love you so fucking much. And I am so sorry.”_

“Otabek!” Yakov barks. Otabek’s eyes snap open. He’d forgotten he’s closed them. “What are you doing? This is an emergency!”

“Father,” Victor’s voice is sharp, almost a reprimand. “We’ve established that nobody knows where she is. What do we do next?”

Yakov’s response is interrupted by the arrival of one of the grooms, at speed.

“We found a note,” she says. “It was left on the bridle hook of the horse that was taken.”

Yakov snatches it from her, then growls in frustration.

“What language is this?”

Lilia removes it from his hand, with care.

“Thank you for your princess,” she reads. “She will make a wonderful queen. Signed… Sara Crispino.”

There is a moment of silence. In it, Otabek realises that Sara hadn’t come into the castle, which means Yuri had probably placed the note there himself. It was a good place to put it. It wouldn’t have been the first place anyone looked. It had bought them more time.

“Hmm,” Otabek says. “I’ve always considered the tradition of bride-stealing somewhat outdated.”

Yuri barks out a laugh, then tries to cover it with a cough. Without seeming to notice, Yakov continues to stare at the note, apparently in shock.

“Well, that’s not a bad match,” Victor says, thoughtfully.

“They did seem to get on rather well at the wedding,” Katsuki agrees.

“They’ll be married by now,” Victor says, putting his arm around his husband. “Dawn wedding. Not ideal, of course, but…” he’s smiling, and Otabek realises he’s happy for his sister, saying this more because he’s expected to than because he believes it, “Yes. It certainly could have been worse.”

This, apparently, is the last straw. Yakov sits down. Launching into damage mitigation mode, Lilia calls for wine, and drags him out. The rest of them stand in silence for a minute, and then Victor dismisses the servants back to their jobs.

“Otabek,” Katsuki says, mildly, as the volume of activity rises around them. “I didn’t get a chance to ask. Why do you have cyrillic printed across your cheek?”

Otabek pauses. Putting his hand up to his face, it comes away smudged with ink. _Had it really been there the whole time?_

 _“Yup,”_ Yuri says, in the tone that suggests Roza is finding out about this as soon as possible.

“I was practicing,” Otabek admits. “I fell asleep in the book.”

“Yes, it has that effect on me too,” Katsuki agrees, smiling. Theirs is a situational kind of friendship, but Yuri had been right about Zhadyra being a good wedding present. If that hadn’t made him an ally of Katsuki, the few times they had been out and hawked together would have solidified it. ‘Dealing with the Rus’ is a topic that they are not in danger of running out of anytime soon. Especially now. Otabek smiles back. 

“Well, we’re not going to bother sending anyone after her,” Victor says, re-joining them. “At least, not yet. So, excitement over for now.”

And that, apparently, is that.

They leave the room in contemplative silence, Yuri falling into step beside Beka with the ease of familiarity. Otabek is trying not to revel in the return of the link too obviously. He suspects he’s failing.

“Eloped,” he says, trying to distract Yuri before he has a chance to be too unbearably smug about it. “I never would have guessed.”

Yuri hums. Behind them, Victor and Yuri are heading the same way. Though they are having their own conversation, it’s not the time to be taking risks. 

Nevertheless, “Very sudden,” Otabek says.

“Totally unexpected,” Yuri agrees. “I don’t suppose you’d mind them visiting us? Sara always brings lemon curd, and… stop smiling at me like that.”

Otabek stops, turns, and kisses him. Yuri curls his fingers in Otabek’s tunic, responding eagerly. It has been a while. By the time they break apart, Victor and Yuri have very thoughtfully made themselves scarce.

“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Otabek says. “And Roza agreed to let Mila stay with her already. I don’t think she’d object to having her wife as well.”

She doesn’t. But she does, at some length, berate them both for being idiots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I'm not sure if i'll be able to post a new chapter next week. I may be moving country again, which isn't great for finding time to write and edit! Please be patient with me <3


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